Utter Awe

I am utter awe of who God is tonight! He is the lover of my soul, and He keeps stirring and drawing me near. Tonight, I got the chance to dig into the Word a little bit. It was a little bit of poking at scriptures, as I sent a verse to a friend. Then, it went from "It kinda sounds like God is talking about Christ..but He can't be...I mean, this is Deuteronomy!"

So off I went into the sunset onto biblos.com to do a bit of researching to see what other translations of the Bible said about the particular scripture, then what different commentaries that discuss what Bible scholars have discovered about bible verses. I use a variety of them, because some people are really off. So I went and see what verses have kinda crossed paths with this verse. Lo and behold what verse do I find:
Matthew 21:11 And the crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee."

So anyway, I figured out "Hey, it is about CHRIST!!!! How cool is that?!?!?!?!?" God lit a fire in my soul tonight. It was much needed. I absolutely LOVE this verse. I do not think I have read it prior to tonight.

Deuteronomy 18:15-19

14 “You will force the other nations out of your land. They listen to people who use magic and try to tell the future. But the LORD your God will not let you do these things. 15 The LORD your God will send to you a prophet. This prophet will come from among your own people, and he will be like me. You must listen to him. 16 God will send you this prophet because that is what you asked him to do. When you were gathered together at Mount Horeb, you became frightened and said, ‘Don’t let us hear the voice of the LORD our God again! Don’t let us see that great fire or we will die!’
17 “The LORD said to me, ‘What they ask for is good. 18 I will send them a prophet like you. This prophet will be one of their own people. I will tell him what he must say, and he will tell the people everything I command. 19 This prophet will speak for me, and I will punish anyone who refuses to listen to my commands.’

A couple things stuck out as I reread this passage a couple time:

a. It kinda related to something I had read about Christian ministry leaders are not to be relevant. According to this scripture, the Lord gets pretty relevant. "I am going to send to you a prophet. It will come from your own people, and he will be like me (Moses). Moses has been the person who has been repeating to the people what God is seeking to tell them despite hardening of their hearts. And God is sending a prophet to be His voice to the people.

b. God seems like he is taking a gradual approach.. using prophets to prepare the people for Christ's coming.

Some questions to ponder:
What if prophets did not precede Christ's coming?
What if in that instant... Christ came instead of having the prophets to prepare the people?

The people were getting their way (You is mentioned 7 times in 2 verses in Deuteronomy 18:15-16). They were getting their desires to not have to hear God's voice and seeing his great fire..Which I imagine would be very scary.

c. God began to prepare the people for Jesus' coming 1,400 ahead of time, which means there must of been alot of preparing...but also, it REALLY excites me that God has planned and states that he is sending someone from the community to speak His truth! God's words would be spoken! He is getting the message out to the people and bringing Salvation to All mankind..

John 17:8
While Jesus is praying:
"for I have passed on to them the message you gave me. They accepted it and know that I came from you, and they believe you sent me."